1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing device, a display control system, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
While performing communication among a plurality of locations (centers) during, for example, a teleconference session; there are times when captured images (examples of second images) that are obtained by image capturing units installed at respective locations are displayed on display units installed at respective locations. Besides, there are also times when not only the captured images are displayed on the display units installed at respective locations but also common images (example of first images), which represent the conference material commonly displayed on the display units installed at respective locations and which are used for the communication purposes, are displayed on the display units. More particularly, a technology (what is called a PC screen sharing function) has been disclosed by which the captured images and the common images are displayed on the screens of personal computers (PCs) (hereinafter, called PC screens) installed at respective locations from which communication is performed.
However, in the conventional PC screen sharing function, particularly, when a large screen is used as the display screen for displaying the capturing images and the common images; if the position of a common image with reference to the position of a captured image on that PC screen (i.e., whether the common image is on the left of the captured image or on the right of the captured image on the PC screen) is set to be identical among the locations, then there is a possibility that a person captured in the captured image is displayed to be looking in the opposite direction to the position of the common image with reference to the position of the captured image when facing the PC screen.
More particularly, if the common image is displayed on the left of a captured image on the PC screen installed at a first location, then a person who is present at the first location and who is looking at the common image on the PC screen has his or her line of sight directed left when facing the PC screen; while a person who is captured in the captured image, which is obtained by the image capturing unit installed at the first location, is looking right. At that time, at a second location too, if the common image is displayed on the left of the captured image (which is obtained by the image capturing unit installed at the first location) on the PC screen; then, although the person captured in the captured images is looking right, the common image is displayed on the left of the captured image on the PC screen (thus, the person captured in the captured image happens to look in the opposite direction to the position of the common image with reference to the captured image when facing the PC screen). For that reason, as far as a person who is viewing the PC screen at the second location is concerned, he or she may get the impression that the person viewing the PC screen at the first location is not looking at the common image and may further get the impression that the person does not have interest in the common image.
In this case, on the PC screen installed at the second location, the position of the captured image and the position of the common image in the left and right direction can be manually interchanged. However, there can be times when nobody is aware of the fact that the persons captured in the captured image are looking in the opposite direction to the position of the common image with reference to the captured image when facing the PC screen, or there can be times when it is complicated to perform the operation of interchanging the position of the captured image and the position of the common image in the left and right direction. Alternatively, it is also possible to think of a method in which image processing is performed with respect to the captured image for the purpose of performing direction transform of the persons captured in that captured image. However, it then becomes necessary to perform such image processing for each person captured in the captured image. For that reason, the persons captured in the captured images get partitioned on a person-by-person basis, thereby leading to a loss in the sense of togetherness of a plurality of persons captured in the captured image or leading to an inconsistency between the background captured in the captured image and the lines of sight of the persons. Besides, if a plurality of persons captured in the captured images is not looking at the same object, then it may result in giving an impression that each person is looking at a different object.
In view of the issues mentioned above, there is a need to provide an information processing device, a display control system, and a computer program product by which, when a first image and a second image, which is obtained by an image capturing unit by capturing the image in front of a display screen of another display device having a display area capable of displaying the first image, is displayed on a display device that is installed at a different location than the other display device; it becomes possible to prevent a situation in which the lines of sight of the persons captured in the second image are not directed in the direction of the display position of the first image and thus appear unnatural.